Book: "Storytime Sourcebook II"

Since I have been focusing so much of my energy on planning my Little Tykes programs, I have been using this book nearly every day throughout my internship. I love this book. It's indispensable to me as someone just starting out with programming. What I love most about this book is that it's organized thematically. Pretty much any theme you could think of has a listing in here. And I absolutely love the suggestions of when to use the different themes - the book has interesting holidays and celebrations listed to go along with each theme. I love this feature! There are holidays I've never heard of that I think kids would just be wild about learning. Each theme has the holiday listing, then a list of videos & books. There are 15 books listed for each theme so it provides you with a wide variety to choose from. There is one fingerplay for each theme, then 2-4 activities and usually one song. What I don't like about this book is that I think there should be more songs listed. I know they provide a number of videos, which often have music, but singing songs with kids is a huge part of most library programs and you can usually use songs no matter where your program takes place. Another thing that I don't like as much about this book is that it only gives you the name of the fingerplay and the source it can be found in. It would be much more helpful if the actual fingerplay were included in this text in case you don't have time to go hunting in other books for the one listed. Overall, though, this book is amazing. I've consulted it for every program I'm planning. Eventually I'd like to not be as reliant on books such as this, but for really unique programming, this is an especially helpful title.

Cullum, C. (2007). The Storytime Sourcebook II. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.